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Covenant Health serves over 1.2 million people – and always strives to do it with the highest caliber of medical care. With one of the largest health systems in the entire region, our Christian mission of healing is accomplished with the help of the highly trained and distinguished doctors that make up our medical staff.

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At Covenant Health, we are proud to serve the healthcare and medical needs of people throughout Lubbock, Texas and the surrounding areas. Find out about our specialties by clicking the option above, or search through all of our services by choosing the letter or search to the left.
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There are 4 additional topics I want to cover today that I did not include in my October 3rd email. I plan on continuing a weekly email for the time being. There will be weeks when the number of issues that need to be communicated necessitates more frequent messages.

Short Stay Surgery

There have been a number of concerns raised about delays in Short Stay Surgery at both Covenant Medical Center and Covenant Women and Children's. These are valid concerns. In the first few days after the EHR Go-live there was an increase in both delayed start times and turnover times in the OR. These issues have been and continue to be addressed. Review of the number of delayed start times and the turnover time at both campuses show ongoing improvements at both campuses each week since Go-live. Although neither of these times is back to Pre-EHR levels they are approaching them. CMC and CWC staff, along with the MEDITECH team, continues to work aggressively to continue to improve the efficiency of the process. We expect to continued improvement at both campuses and a return to baselines as each step of the process is examined and improved.

Pdoc

We have had sporadic reports of history and examination elements and clinical data appearing in error on patients' charts. Some of these episodes have involved elements that were carried forward from previous notes and lab data that was imported or copied into a Progress Note in error.

Please review your notes before signing them off as final to ensure that they contain what you want them to and are accurate. "Draft" notes can still be edited prior to final signature and any inaccuracies can be easily corrected. Once a note is signed it is "locked" and we cannot go back and alter these notes. Once this occurs you will need to add an addendum to the note to correct any inaccuracies that are present.

EHR Support

You will have noticed that there were fewer "purple people" on the floors last week. As we get farther from Go-live the number of support personnel on the floors has decreased. Our Regional Physician Liaisons remain available and can be reached at 725-4189 during normal working hours (as well as after hours and on weekends for urgent problems) for assistance with MEDITECH and its use. The Help Line, 725-5555 is staffed 24/7 to help with technical issues or questions, or difficulties with access and passwords.

It is important to note that those of us who are better at MEDITECH can help our colleagues who are not as proficient with the EHR, and we are hearing report of physicians helping their colleagues when they run into issues. Thank you for doing this, we are all learning together and sharing our knowledge with each other is a great way of advancing the process.

Dragon

As you are aware, there have been issues with getting Dragon voice recognition software stabilized in the ED. We are making progress and last week we started a pilot with a limited number of physicians on the impatient units to test Dragon outside of the ED. We plan on continuing this over the next 7-10 days as we continue to work through these issues and resolve them. Once this is successful we will gradually expand the number of users until everyone who wants to use Dragon is able to do so.

As always, please feel free to call me with questions at 806.725.0265.

Thanks to all of you who are helping to make our EHR implementation a success.